It has long seemed to me that if altruism is genetic and evolutionarily based, it would be felt and practiced by individuals at the level of the tribe, the unit of population in which humans have been organized for most of our developmental history. Furthermore,
altruism towards members of our family, tribe, or clan must go hand in hand with the capacity to be aggressive to those who are in the next family, tribe, or clan who threaten our land, food, mates and children. With this perspective, there is no contradiction between our human
ability to love and protect our loved ones while at the same time plunder, murder, and rape our more distant neighbors. These capacities are in all of us and have always been used through human history to protect and preserve one's own people and to kill the "other".
The interesting question is how do we determine who "we" are versus the "other". Just as Noam Chomsky said that humans are all genetically equipped to learn language but not necessarily any
particular language, we are all equipped to identify with some group, but not necessarily a particular group. Some of us define our group more universally, some more narrowly. Some see all of humanity as our
"brothers and sisters." Others see only our racial or national group. Some are vegetarians because they have compassion for all animals. Some omnivores feel compassion for the animals they eat but have equal
compassion for the vegetables.
We see historically how sophisticated, cosmopolitan cities such as Beirut, where neighbors could live together successfully for hundreds of years can become violence-torn war zones where neighbors can kill each other because of ethnic or religious differences. This same story gets repeated in almost every region, in every culture, in every era. People can live together with love and cooperation and then shift to
vicious mutual destruction. Even married couples who are making love one day can be betraying and killing each other the next.
Despite the compelling logic of such a biologically based phenomenon where members of one tribe or ethnic group could love, affiliate, be compassionate, and sacrifice for each other while hating,
killing, raping, and stealing land from the members of the next group, certain questions remained unanswered. The most difficult question is what is the mechanism? How could such complex behaviors be
biologically based and transmitted through the genes?
The Role of Oxytocin
Recently, there have been a raft of articles appearing about the role of the hormone oxytocin. Oxytocin is a neuropeptide, closely related to vasopressin, produced in the hypothalamus and released to the posterior lobe of the pituitary. (See Neumann, "Brain Oxytocin, A key regulator of emotional and social behaviors in both females and males", Journal of Neuroendocrinology 20, 2008.)
Oxytocin has long been known to be a hormone involved in childbirth and lactation. It dampens the amygdala's response to fear (Carter, The Human Brain Book, 2009). It promotes anxiety relief and protection from stress. Bowlby noted that when babies cry, there is a release of maternal oxtocin, the milk "let-down factor" that stimulates the release of breast milk. He
used this observation to illustrate that "attachment" is a genetic, biologically based phenomenon, a primary human motivation that went far beyond Freud's mechanistic hypotheses that love was merely derivative
of tension-reduction (Bowlby, Separation, 1972).
Oxytocin in also known to be released in men and women during orgasm. It is thought to be a strong modulator of attachment between men and women in loving relationships and between parent and children.
Oxytocin promotes monogamous pair-bonding in mammals. It has been known as the "feel-good" hormone that seems to be at the core of much
attachment bonding in the family. It also promotes empathy and social bonding.
There is literature on the role of oxytocin in trauma. Not only does oxytocin help mothers forget the pain of childbirth, there is evidence that oxytocin facilitates bonding between women and their
abusive fathers and husbands (Descilo, "Understanding and treating traumatic bonds", 2009; Taylor et. al., "Biobehavioral Responses to stress in females: Tend-and befriend, not fight-or-flight", Psychological Review, in press).
In addition to its affiliative effects, it is known to result in aggressive behavior in lactating mothers to potential threats toward their babies. (See Lawson, "Neural Correlates of Coalitionary and Violent Behavior Tendencies", May, 2010)
Two very interesting studies have been published by Carsten De Drew from the University of Amsterdam ("The Neuropeptide Oxytocin Regulates Parochial Altruism in Intergroup Conflict Among Humans", Science, 2010; "Oxytocin Promotes human Ethnocentrism", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2011).
In the first study, the authors presented data that subjects were likely to distribute money to people in the experimental "in-group" versus the "out-group" after
inhaling oxytocin. In a second study published this year, Dutch subjects were asked to press a key in response to Dutch, German, or Muslim sounding names. Under the influence of inhaled oxytocin,
subjects favored the "in-group" (Dutch names) again at the expense of the Muslim or German names. Similarly, in answer to questions of who
they would help in an overloaded lifeboat, or to potential victims of an oncoming train, subjects were more likely to save the Dutch sounding names rather than the Muslim names, under the influence of recently
inhaled oxytocin. The authors concluded that oxytocin enhanced ethnocentric discrimination.
Shamay-Tsoory and colleagues at the University of Haifa found that inhalation of oxytocin increased envy and gloating in subjects who had
either lost or gained money in an experimental game of chance. (Shamay-Tsoory, et. al., Intranasal Administration of Oxytocin
Increases Envy and Schadenfreude (Gloating), Epigenetics and Suicide, Nov. 2009).
Another study looked at oxytocin and singing, showing that professional and amateur singers had increased levels of oxytocin after a singing lesson. (Grape, et. al., "Does singing promote well being?
An empirical study of professional and amateur singers during a singing lesson," Integr Physical Behavioral Science, Jan-Mar, 2003.)
De Drew and other authors argue that oxytocin in increased in any activity where people get together in groups including pep rallies, soccer games, concerts, military gatherings, and church gatherings. Singing and music are often integral to social gatherings. Grape et.
al.'s study supports the role of oxytocin with regard to music which complements the view of oxytocin as central to group affiliative feelings in social gatherings. It seems that oxytocin may play an integral biological role in social events that enhance tribal or intergroup cohesion and that may also lead to intertribal conflict or
aggression.
The brain is a very complex organ and there are a multitude of hormonal and neurochemical influences on human behavior. It is simplistic to suggest that one hormone rules all social behaviors. But it is instructive how certain behaviors that are directly influenced by
oxytocin are actually not so disparate but may be fundamentally connected - sex, falling in love, monogamy, familial bonding, group affiliation, attachment to abusers, loyalty, self-sacrifice,
discrimination, aggression in protection of children, ethnocentrism, and violence against "others". This gives a more compelling view of how altruism can be adaptive to the survival of the certain genes or
gene clusters. It makes sense that altruism toward the family, the clan, and the tribe is intimately associated with discrimination and aggression toward others outside the family, the clan, and the tribe. The role of oxytocin gives a likely mechanism whereby this natural
human tendency to promote the family at the expense of the "other" can be effected.
This morally perplexing dual nature of man was clearly laid out by Rheinhold Niebuhr, a theologian and political philosopher, in his wonderful book Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932). (Niebuhr, by the
way, was credited as the author of the Serenity Prayer, "God grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.")
In "Moral Man and Immoral Society", Niebuhr wrote that a man can be moral and altruistic to others acting as an individual but could not do so when acting as part of a group. He wrote, "Individual men may be
moral in the sense that they are able to consider interests other than their own They are endowed by nature with a measure of sympathy and consideration for their kind . But all these achievements are more
difficult, if not impossible for human societies and social groups. In every human group there is less reason to guide and to check impulse, less capacity for self-transcendence, less ability to comprehend the
needs of others, and therefore more unrestrained egoism than the individuals, who comprise the group, reveal in their personal relationship" (pp xi-xii).
Niebuhr went on to say, ""Man is endowed by nature with organic relations with his fellow-men; and natural impulse prompts him to consider the needs of others even when they compete with his own. With
the higher mammals, man shares concern for his offspring . Since those early days the units of human cooperation have constantly grown in size, and the areas of significant relationships between the units have
likewise increased. Nevertheless conflict between the national units remains as a permanent rather than a passing characteristic of their relations to each other; and each national unit finds it increasingly difficult to maintain either peace or justice within its common life."
(pp. 2-4)
Steve Foreman
